Sign Inventory, Week 6

Alzheimer's: The Wife

She answers the bothersome telephone, takes the message, forgets the message, forgets who called.
One of their daughters, her husband guesses: the one with the dogs, the babies, the boy Jed?
Yes, perhaps, but how tell which, how tell anything when all the name tags have been lost or switched,
when all the lonely flowers of sense and memory bloom and die now in adjacent bites of time?
Sometimes her own face will suddenly appear with terrifying inappropriateness before her in a mirror.
She knows that if she's patient, its gaze will break, demurely, decorously, like a well-taught child's,
it will turn from her as though it were embarrassed by the secrets of this awful hide-and-seek.
If she forgets, though, and glances back again, it will still be in there, furtively watching, crying.

*By drawing a comparison between Alzheimer's and nametags is an interesting way to view the problem.

*Continuing the metaphor by saying memory is a like a flower dying just as soon as it was born creates an interesting time structure.

*Use of the mirror to show the effects of the problem.

*There is a comparison of the demented child's game to alzheimer's.

*The idea that her mind is trapped and watching furtivily creates an interesting dynamic of how the mind works.

*In line 1, she answers the bothersome telephone. Alzheimer's drawback is lack of communcation, and seeing a device like this act has bothersome is an interesting dynamic.

*There is no clear reason why the husband thinks it is the daughters that called. Then, why is there such a problem with calling them back one by one?

*The fact that her face is "inappropriate" is odd, since she is controlling the looks.